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Wednesday, September 19, 2012

Digital Literacy Report: consultation

Consultation is open on the American Library Association's Digital Literacy Report, produced by their OITP Digital Literacy Task Force. This is an important area where it is obviously essential to stress the valuable role of libraries and librarians. You you not have to be an ALA member to comment, but you need to register with the ALA Connect system (free). Once you do that, and log in, a comment option appears at the bottom of the page. I haven't had time to look at it thoroughly, but my informal comment from a quick glance is that the definition of "digital literacy" seems too narrowly focused ("the ability to use information and communication technologies to find, evaluate, create, and communicate information, requiring both cognitive and technical skills") and although I can see why this happened in a library context, the digital literacy researchers I know stress the social aspect of digital literacy. I think it could be a good idea to acknowledge this, even if you go on to identify a spcial place for libraries/ librarians within that.
The report can be downloaded from. http://connect.ala.org/node/187923
Comments are open until October 19th. Thanks to Lyn Parker for alerting me to this report.Photo by Sheila Webber: Autumn perspective, taken in Second Life, September 2012

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Information Literacy is ...

"the adoption of appropriate information behaviour to identify, through whatever channel or medium, information well fitted to information needs, leading to wise and ethical use of information in society." (Webber and Johnston)